(CNN)As
the Brussels attacks jarred Europe and sent shockwaves through U.S.
politics, President Barack Obama stuck to his agenda: a speech to the
Cuban people and a baseball game.
Critics
such as Republican presidential candidate John Kasich railed at Obama
for failing to return to the U.S. immediately. But the President argued
that sticking to his schedule denied terrorists any victory in their
goal of upending daily life.
"The
whole premise of terrorism is to try to disrupt people's ordinary
lives," Obama said Tuesday in Havana when asked if he had second
thoughts about attending the game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the
Cuban national team.
The clashing
approaches offer a window into the president's worldview -- his desire
to emphasize long-term interests over short-term emergencies and project
calm at a time of high public concern. It's a dynamic that has
sometimes caused him problems, leaving aides concerned that Obama's cool
can make him seem detached from Americans seeking reassurance.
He
gave brief remarks following the attack before continuing with his
regularly schedule speech to the Cuban people focusing on opening a new
era with the island nation. The White House indicated soon after that
his schedule for the day and the trip wouldn't change.
While
the President's whereabouts or demeanor have little bearing on what
European and security officials say is very close collaboration, it gave
political opponents an easy target.
Republican front-runner Donald Trump tweeted that "this madness must be stopped and I will stop it."
Kasich
also took to Twitter to say that "the president must return home
immediately and get to work with our allies to respond with strength
against the enemies of the west."
And
at a news conference, the Ohio governor later said, "If I was in Cuba
right now, the last thing I would be doing is going to a baseball game."
In Havana, Obama not only stayed
at the game, but he used another baseball example to convey the kind of
cool toughness he wants to see from Americans in times of national
stress. He cited the peppery pre-game speech that Red Sox player David
Ortiz gave the day after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings.
Ortiz
took to the field and urged the fans to "stay strong," telling the
crowd that "this is our f****** city and nobody's gonna dictate our
freedom."
Obama said on Tuesday
that "that is the kind of resilience and the kind of strength we have to
continually show in the face of these terrorists."
"What
they can do is scare," Obama said, "and make people afraid and disrupt
our daily lives and divide us. And as long as we don't allow that to
happen, we're gonna be okay."
The
60-nation coalition that is "pounding" ISIS, which claimed
responsibility for the attack, will continue to pursue the group, Obama
noted.
The reality, say U.S. and European
officials, is that the President's whereabouts have little impact on an
extremely close and coordinated counterterrorism effort -- or on his
ability to conduct international business.
Early
Tuesday morning, after being briefed on the attacks, Obama called the
Belgian Prime Minister to offer condolences and any assistance necessary
in investigating the attacks and bringing the killers to justice.
"The
President can operate anywhere in the world, and he has demonstrated
that," a Democratic member of the House intelligence committee, Rep.
Eric Swalwell of California, told CNN's "At This Hour."
Swalwell
said that Obama had been briefed by intelligence officials and "is
going to go about his business and make sure that those in command and
in position are acting accordingly."
"We need to trust that that's going to happen," Swalwell added.
But
sometimes more than trust is demanded. During a November trip to Asia,
during which Obama hoped to tout deepening U.S. ties to the region, he
came under fire from a press corps that wanted to know why he wasn't
addressing the brutal terrorist attacks in Paris just days earlier.
He
acknowledged in a December off-the-record conversation with news
columnists reported by The New York Times that his low-key approach left
Americans' worried that he wasn't doing enough to ensure their
security.
If that experience didn't
seem to change his approach Tuesday, the reason may lie in a lengthy
recent profile in The Atlantic magazine. That piece described the
President as frustrated that terrorism keeps swamping his long-term
priorities, including improving ties to Latin America and intensifying
links to Asia.
The same profile
notes Obama's admiration for Israeli resilience in the face of repeated
attacks. It describes his penchant for reminding his advisors that more
Americans die because of guns or accidents in the bathtub -- and those
advisers' efforts to keep Obama doing this too publicly because it might
make him seem insensitive to public fears.
Behind
the scenes, U.S. and European officials say that cooperation that began
in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is continually improving.
The Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, intelligence agencies and
the State Department work closely with their counterparts to exchange
information.
There are
challenges, according to one European diplomat who spoke anonymously to
discuss intelligence-sharing, including smaller countries within Europe
that don't have the intelligence-collecting capacity of larger
countries.
"But it flows very
quickly and easily," the diplomat said, when the U.S. or Europe have
"partial info or a profile, a little piece of the puzzle, for instance,
an alias" of a suspected terrorist.
Tina
Kaidanow, the State Department's ambassador for counterterrorism, told a
Washington audience last month that "while there is still a great deal
of work to do, we are beginning to see tangible progress," including
information-sharing agreements between the U.S. and dozens of
international partners to assist efforts to identify, track and deter
the travel of suspected terrorists.
Other U.S. officials pointed to the Brussels attacks as a sign that the campaign against ISIS is succeeding.
A
senior State Department official told reporters Tuesday that while the
U.S. is not able to confirm ISIS' claims of responsibility for the
attacks in Belgium, the U.S. believes the group, also know as Daesh, has
been resorting to these types of traditional terror attacks in response
to their loss of territory and infrastructure in Iraq and Syria.
"You're
starting to see Daesh resort more and more to these kinds of attacks,
to this kind of violence," the official said, "because they are being
pressured and squeezed territorially and organizationally inside Iraq
and Syria."
As ISIS' territory and
infrastructure are shrinking, the official said, "they are now resorting
to more typical terrorist tactics to sow fear."
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